The many manifestations of magical thinking: a systematic review

Magical thinking (MT) involves beliefs that thoughts or actions can influence events in unrealistic ways. While MT is integral to obsessive compulsive disorder, and reflected in the cognitive features of schizophrenia, it is observable across the general population in various forms. Given its prevalence and potential relevance to a range of psychiatric conditions, understanding more about what may predispose an individual to MT, and how it may in some cases culminate in psychological distress or dysfunction would be helpful. This paper reports a systematic review of studies investigating MT, encompassing both magical ideation and thought-action fusion specifically, across the disciplines of psychiatry and psychology, to shed further light on the likely predisposing factors and behavioural consequences of MT, its potential neurobiological underpinnings, and role in psychiatric symptomatology. After exclusions, 191 studies were identified that explored MT in association with a diverse array of secondary topics, from gambling compulsions to childhood trauma, within both clinical and non-clinical samples, across a range of cultural contexts. On an intra-individual level, MT demonstrates numerous cognitive and emotional correlates, and on a societal level it may influence both social custom and religious tradition. A synthesis of the available evidence uncovers unexplored relationships with social cognition and mental health, and future research investigating its emerging relationships with stress, mood and social connection, may uncover functions beyond those exhibited by a simple marker of psychopathology.